Argumentative Essay: Black Lives Matter

"Black Lives Matter" is considered a divisive statement, but most people who take issue with it express their views on it by unintentionally upholding it. An open, outright white supremacist might say "Black Lives Don't Matter." A nihilist might say "No Lives Matter." But the "Black Lives Matter" movement is most frequently met with a criticism oftentimes delivered in the form of a question: "Well, don't All Lives Matter?" And yes, all lives matter. But that is not valid a rebuttal of the notion that black lives matter. Rather, it is the conclusive proof that they do: black lives matter because all lives matter; all lives can matter only if black lives matter. However, the debate does not end with that unassailable bit of logic centered around the universal definition of the word "all." No, the divisiveness of the statement and the movement lie in its apparent banality. If all lives matter, black lives clearly matter, and if black lives clearly matter, why bother to say so? Why bring race into the discussion? The answer to that

The sentence I have just written is a cliché, a platitude. But it is because of that banality that the famous line from our Declaration of Independence has been such an effective weapon (if not a shield) for oppressed people in this country. It is a generally accepted statement. Its truth and validity are not disputed. It was written into American lore by our Founding Fathers as part of the document and movement that created our nation. And because of this, oppressed people are relieved of the burden of convincing everybody that they should have equal rights--- rather, by proving they exist under the label of "all," they can affirm that equality is a right they already have, a right they were guaranteed on the first day of our nation's existence. Frederick Douglass used this in his speech, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of